Fabian Wenzel, Hamburg DE

Fabian Wenzel, Hamburg DE

MODEL-BASED DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF DEMENTIA AND INTERACTIVE SETTING OF LEVEL OF SIGNIFICANCE - When detecting and classifying hypo-metabolic regions in the brain to facilitate dementia diagnosis, a patient's brain scan image, generated using an FDG-PET scan, is compared to a plurality of hypo-metabolic region patterns in brain scan images associated with a plurality of types of dementia. In a fully automated mode, the patient's scan is compared to all scans stored in a knowledge base, and a type of dementia associated with a most likely match is output to a user along with a highlighted image of the patient' s brain. In a semi-automated mode, a user specifies two or more types of dementia, and the patient's scan is compared to scans typical of the specified types. Diagnosis information including respective likelihoods for each type is then output to the user. Additionally, the user can adjust a threshold significance level to increase or decrease a number of voxels that are included in hypo-metabolic regions highlighted in the patient' brain scan image.

IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS - Image processing apparatus 110 for processing a medical image, comprising an input 120 for obtaining the medical image 122 and medical data 124, the medical image constituting a field of view in three-dimensional [3D] patient data, and the medical data showing an anatomical context of a content of the field of view, an output 130 for providing an output image 160 comprising the medical image and a visualization of the medical data, the medical data constituting non-patient specific medical data, and the imaging processing apparatus further comprising a processor 140 for (i) performing an image alignment between the medical image and the medical data for obtaining a transformation providing a position of the content with respect to its anatomical context, and (ii) using the transformation for establishing a graphical representation of the field of view in the visualization of the medical data at said position.